1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a D/A conversion (digital/analog conversion) circuit, and more particularly, to a D/A conversion circuit to be used in a driver circuit of a semiconductor device.
It should be noted that in this specification, the term “semiconductor device” is intended to generally indicate all of such an apparatus capable of operating by employing semiconductor properties. For example, the semiconductor device can include an electro-optical device, a semiconductor circuit, or an electronic equipment.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the technique for manufacturing a semiconductor device, e.g., a thin film transistor (TFT), in which a semiconductor thin film is formed on an inexpensive glass substrate shows rapid advancement because of increased demand for an active matrix type semiconductor display device (in particular, an active matrix type liquid crystal display device).
The active matrix type liquid crystal display device includes several hundred thousands to several millions of pixel regions arranged in matrix. Each of the pixel regions is provided with a TFT which controls, through its switching function, electric charges to be supplied to or discharged from a corresponding pixel electrode.
Specifically, with high finer processing and higher image quality of a display device being required, an active matrix type liquid crystal display device of digital driving type capable of operating at a higher speed has drawn much attention.
FIG. 19 shows a conventional active matrix type liquid crystal display device of digital driving type. This conventional active matrix type liquid crystal display device of digital driving type is composed of, as shown in FIG. 19, such components as a source signal line shift register 1401, digital decoder address lines (a-d) 1402, latch circuits (LAT1) 1403, other latch circuits (LAT2) 1404, a latch pulse line 1405, D/A conversion circuits 1406, gradation gray scale) voltage lines 1407, source signal lines 1408, a gate signal line shift register 1409, gate signal lines (scanning lines) 1410, and pixel TFTs 1411. Herein, a 4-bit active matrix type liquid crystal display device of digital driving type is taken as an example. It should be noted that for simplicity, each of the illustrated latch circuits (LAT1 and LAT2) in FIG. 19 actually represents four of the latch circuits.
Digital signals (digital gradation signals) supplied to the address lines (a-d) 1402 of the digital decoder are sequentially written onto groups of the latch circuits LAT1 (LAT1 groups) in accordance with timing signals supplied from the source signal line shift register 1401.
A time period required until completion of a set of writing operations of the digital signals for the LAT1 groups is referred to as “one line period”. More specifically, the one line period corresponds to a time period from the time when the writing operation of the digital signal from the digital decoder to the most leftward LAT1 is started until the time when the writing operation of the digital signal from the digital decoder to the most rightward LAT1 is completed.
After the completion of writing operations of the digital signals for the LAT1 groups, the digital signals thus written into the LAT1 groups are simultaneously transmitted to and written onto the LAT2 groups at the time when a latch pulse appears on the latch pulse line in accordance with the operation timings of the shift register.
Onto the LAT1 groups that have thus transmitted the digital signals to the LAT2 groups, other digital signals supplied to the digital decoder are again written sequentially in accordance with the signals supplied from the source signal line shift register.
During this second-round one line period, voltages in accordance with the digital signals transmitted to the LAT2 groups are supplied to the source signal lines in synchronization with the start of the second-turn one line period. In the exemplary driver circuit described herein, conversion of the digital signals into gradation voltages is implemented by selecting one of the 16 gradation voltage lines by means of the D/A conversion circuit.
The selected gradation voltage is supplied to the corresponding source signal line during the one line period. The corresponding TFT is switched in response to a scanning signal from the gate signal line shift register so that liquid crystal molecules are driven.
By repeating the above-mentioned operations for the number of the scanning lines, one picture (one frame) is created. In general, in the active matrix type liquid crystal display device, 60 frames of images are switched per second.
With reference to FIG. 20, a conventional D/A conversion circuit to be used in the above-mentioned digital driver circuit will be described below.
The conventional 4-bit D/A conversion circuit comprises a plurality of switches (sw0-sw15) and a plurality of gradation voltage lines (V0-V15). One of the switches (sw0-sw15) is selected in accordance with the 4-bit digital signal supplied from the LAT2 groups, and a voltage is supplied to the source signal line 1407 from the gradation voltage line coupled to the selected switch.
One D/A conversion circuit as described above is provided substantially to each of the source signal lines.
The conventional 4-bit D/A conversion circuit as set forth above includes the 16 switches and the 16 gradation voltage lines. Furthermore, the number of the switches will be required to increase in an exponential manner with an increase in the number of bits. In other words, the conventional D/A conversion circuit intended to handle n-bit digital signal requires 2n switches. Accordingly, in an actual active matrix type liquid crystal display device, a large area is occupied by the switches, resulting in a large area occupied by the whole driver circuit. This is disadvantageous for realizing miniaturization of the device.
With reference to FIG. 21, another conventional D/A conversion circuit to be used in the above-mentioned digital driver circuit will be described below. In the 4-bit D/A conversion circuit as shown in FIG. 21, similarly to the 4-bit D/A conversion circuit as described above, one of the switches (sw0-sw15) is selected in accordance with the 4-bit digital signal supplied from the LAT2 groups, and a voltage is supplied to the source signal line from the gradation voltage line coupled to the selected switch.
The D/A conversion circuit shown in FIG. 21 includes five gradation voltage lines (V0-V4), and the number of the line is less than that of the 4-bit D/A conversion circuit in FIG. 20 as described above.
The voltage to be applied across the V0 to V4 is divided by way of resistors so that voltages of different levels are supplied to the respective five gradation voltage lines (V0-V4). In particular, the highest voltage is applied to the V4, while the lowest voltage is applied to the V0.
However, the D/A conversion circuit shown in FIG. 21 has a problem in which the overall resistance becomes large because the voltages to be applied to the respective gradation voltage lines are divided via the resistors, whereby a sufficient writing time of display data to a liquid crystal panel cannot be obtained.
In addition, when the number of bits increases, a device resistance and wiring resistance also increase.
Furthermore, in order to realize high finer definition of a semiconductor display device, the number of pixels, i.e., the number of source signal lines, are required to be increased.
Moreover, as described previously, an increase in the number of source signal lines leads to an increase in the area occupied by the D/A conversion circuit, as well as increases in the wiring remittances and the device resistance. These will also prevent high finer definition from being realized.